


:Re

by bigOwlEngery (Hecatetheviolet)



Series: Inversion [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul, tokyo ghoul :re
Genre: ABO, Alternate Universe, Backstory, Black Goat - Freeform, Cafe Ownership, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Cultural Differences, Gen, Legends, Mythology - Freeform, Secret Organizations, The One Eyed King - Freeform, Worldbuilding, ghoul culture, nonlinear, nontraditional abo, outside pov, wheel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-11-05 06:52:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17913920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecatetheviolet/pseuds/bigOwlEngery
Summary: The One Eyed King is a legend as old as any ghoul can remember. Legends do not come from nothing.





	1. Shadow of the King

There was a mask in Uta’s shop shaped like a rabbit.

 

It was elegantly sculpted, painted to the tiniest detail, and coated with a layer of real fur, soft to the touch. The stench of the epoxy Uta had used on it had lingered oppressively around the shop for weeks after he first hanged it on the wall for display.

 

Uta, who was an asshole at the best of times, didn’t even pretend to care that it bothered others. Of course a mask maker wouldn’t notice such a stench, but it would have been a nice gesture to let it air out first.

 

Even nearly three years after seeing it for the first time, a faint smell like plastic still emanated from it, making Touka’s nose wrinkle against the fumes. Any humans who lived with this thing as long as Uta had would’ve gotten cancer from it by now, probably. _No wonder it had never sold._

 

There was a quiet hum from behind her, a near silent scrape of a scalpel over thin ceramic. Touka huffed a sigh and moved on.

 

The next mask on the wall was newer, a sleek, metal thing like a mirror, curved into a shield. She pulled a face and moved on before Uta could cough.

 

An elegant, generic gas mask. A white porcelain doll face. A kabuki mask. A wooden mask like the hull of a tipped ship. A shark.

 

“Why won’t you take the rabbit?” Uta murmured from around the brush in his mouth. No real question in it, just making her confront reality. Fuck, Touka hated mask makers. Uta was usually the only tolerable one. _So insistent._

 

She huffed again because she didn’t feel like talking, and didn’t look at it. Didn’t have to. Could describe it in perfect detail in her sleep. The bright blue dyed leather mask in front of her seemed more worthy of inspection.

 

“Turn.” Uta instructed quietly from behind her.

 

Touka turned and held still while he pressed the half complete mask to her face. The clay was still only leather hard and it smelled like soil. Like the earth. Even under Uta’s hands, it felt cold.

 

“Nose bridge is too short.” She told him. He hummed again, tilting it in centimeters across her face until something there satisfied him. It had no eyeholes, so she had no clue what he was doing until he removed it. Without the mask, Touka couldn’t avoid looking directly into Uta’s wide eyes, since he had decided to be three inches from her.

 

Neither of them spoke.

 

Finally, he pulled away to stand at his full height, one of his tattooed hands brushing lightly against her cheek for a moment.

 

“You have lower cheekbones than Renji,” He said.

 

A Greek statue had lower cheekbones than Renji. _So what._ That didn’t make Touka special. Wasn’t worthy of comment. She didn't rise to the bait of speaking.

 

Touka stared into the dark corners of the wall far across from her while Uta puttered quietly around his work desk. He came back with a shallow pot, swirling a thick handle in it in perfect circles. Red powder clouded off the end when he tapped it.

 

It felt soft, but somehow heavy when he applied it to her cheeks, her lips. It smelled like clay. Tasted like clean soil. Like dust.

 

“Is this my mask?” She asked, just to be a bitch.

 

“Yes.” He answered serenely, sticking the brush back in the pot and wandering away again. “This is what you wear when you’re around humans, isn’t it?”

 

Touka sucked in a breath that filled her mouth with clay dust. Tried not to cough.

 

“I’ve made makeup masks before,” Uta mused, finally parking himself back in his chair where he would hopefully leave Touka to her brooding. “But I don’t think I’d ever wear one.”

 

When he turned to look at her, he had – of course Uta could apply a flawless eyeshadow and blush in fifteen seconds or less. Of course.

 

But he was right. It didn’t fit his face. The natural pinking looked good on the humans Touka had seen, and it probably looked okay on her because she looked like them, but Uta – his mask maker’s face wasn’t suited to lifelike colors. The bare hint of blood under skin seemed anathema to the bone white canvas of a ghoul’s face. It seemed especially garish around his eyes, totally crude against the perfect pitch of black and red. His usually invisible white lips looked bigger than she thought they were, but maybe he had painted them that way.

 

“Add some eyebrows,” She encouraged, feeling better not being the only ridiculous one in the room.

 

That got her one of his tiny smiles, larger than usual, limed in pink. The towel he rubbed it off with was already well stained with paint. Since he was fundamentally an ass, he didn’t toss it in Touka’s direction.

 

But she got the point. She had to choose a face.

 

The Rabbit, as it was, as she had been, was too close to home. Too well known. Involved with Antique, probably. Touka took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The clay on her lips tasted like ashes.

 

She couldn’t have the Rabbit. Not now. Not anymore. Not after that. What had even been the point of the first mask? If she had exposed herself and been killed back when she’d been being an idiot, things would be different now. Definitely for her, but for everyone else? Probably better. What had the Rabbit done other than idiotic Dove hunting? _What the fuck had the Rabbit ever done for her?_

 

What had Touka done to deserve her mask?

 

She breathed in again, very slowly, tasting dust, tasting the earth. No salt.

 

“I want,” She began, “A mask that will not let me be the Rabbit.”

 

The clay stained the cracks in her lips.

 

* * *

 

 

The decision came earlier than she thought it would have to. Although they had new masks, new identities, doves were flocking around every corner, clogging up the streets and cutting them off from hunting. Either they left the Ward for their own protection, or they did something drastic to preserve their life here. What was left of their life here. What few lives were left here.

 

Touka and Yomo and Hinami, in a metal box. _Alone._ The echoes were stifling.

 

No one snarked, because Touka didn’t have a partner for banter. No one watched with amusement as they tried to make coffee from a broken carafe. No one bragged, because there was nothing to brag about. No one read quietly in the corner. No one watched over them, because they were hardly worth watching over.

 

It hurt. The lack. The silence.

 

It wasn't a shock when Hinami broke first.

 

She had stood tall through so much, but she was also growing taller by the day. Touka’s shirt that she had borrowed was a shirt now, not a dress.

 

They hadn’t been able to stop her when she left to join those fucking idiots when Kaneki hit his moody phase. They hadn’t been able to stop her when she left to chase her mother. They could not stop her now. Touka could only hope that she would prove as strong as Ayato in that place. That she would be able to live there. And live.

 

She’d never fought Yomo before. Not really. Training, but. That day, when she blocked his sharp glance at Hinami’s tiny packed bag and carefully not-clenched fists, they had skirted breathlessly close to all out war. But since it was Yomo, all he did was tense up painfully and close his eyes against them. Against Touka’s steady stare, Hinami’s determination. Hinami’s strength. Their tension seemed to reverberate off the metal of the cargo container that contained their lives.

 

Hinami went to Aogiri. Yomo didn’t come back for three days.

 

When he returned, Touka had the forms she’d printed from the library on the table, her headphones on as she filled them out in painstaking detail. He dropped a newspaper wrapped package of meat at her elbow and went about filling out the freezer.

 

Once she was finished eating, he returned to her. Stood at the opposite end of the table and watched her write.

 

“I need better papers,” She told him. “Otherwise I won’t be able to operate a business here.”

 

His hands tightened against the back of the chair, dwarfing the thin metal. Without a word, he turned away into the other room, stooping under the curtain. Touka wondered if he’d leave again. Continued staring at line 6, trying to figure out what a deductible was.

 

He returned five minutes later, a folder pale in his grip. Touka stared at him, lowering her headphones.

 

“Just in case,” He told her quietly.

 

She held the folder carefully for a few long seconds. When she opened it, the papers for one _Kirishima Ayato_ were on top. The kanji was different. Touka breathed as best she could.

 

“Okay,” She managed finally. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

 

Yomo could teach her the things she needed to survive, but he couldn't teach her how to be human.

 

He had never tried, so it was something that Touka had to teach herself slowly, testing the waters on actions and words and attitude with her classmates. With human patrons of Antique. With the occasion stranger.

 

Arata had tried very hard to be human, but Touka was pretty sure he'd missed the mark a bit, and her memories were clouded with a child's easy acceptance and misunderstanding, anyway.

 

She was proud of her starting from square one all over again and passing well by human standards.

 

* * *

 

Two weeks later, Yomo returned to their box with a stack of papers and a burner phone.

 

The phone spoke for itself. A computer was out of the question, and they couldn’t keep using the library’s public stuff forever, not when she needed to be a reliable contact for humans. It was cheap enough for now, and reliable enough for Touka’s purposes.

 

The plastic bag full of paper was a mystery, because Yomo never explained what he could dump on the counter and escape from.

 

They turned out to be pamphlets, probably grabbed from a community center or a student building somewhere. Course registries a couple semesters out of date, a few STEM field syllabus, pamphlets on finance and management courses, brochures about teenage pregnancy statistics, a flyer for on campus drama club shows. The logo was all Kamii.

 

Yomo couldn’t read. Either he’d braved detection by grabbing everything he saw, or he toughed out some questions to a guidance counselor or bored student desk help. Touka was surprised that she couldn’t honestly say which he would have done. These felt too targeted to _young female human highschool student in a poor financial state_ to be random enough for a stash-and-run.

 

Yomo didn’t speak much, but the things he did for her, for them, told her the truth. She knew he meant well, that he meant her the best, and that he was trying. That she had his support in this.

 

She used her new papers to sign up for certification courses. Pulled out her entire meager savings from under the loose tiles in the kitchen and then filled out every scholarship form she could find.

 

She was a master at faking human expression and enjoyment of bureaucratic processes, so it all came together slowly but surely. Once she had the human stamp of approval on Food Preparation, Business Financial Management, and Normal Human Female Social Behavior, she got her license handed to her.

 

The kanji was all wrong, but the pride was real.

 

She read every book she could get her hands on about business management, then took out a loan for a building. It was small, but homey, all dark wood and enclosed spaces. The perfect creature comforts for ghouls. The concerned estate manager had tried to gently steer her toward more human options, but Touka knew what she was about. Knew who and what she wanted to prioritize.

 

:Re opened its doors on a Tuesday. There was a light rain under a bright, hot summer sun to reflect off the freshly washed windows. Nishiki, who had reappeared out of the woodwork one Saturday, was roped into helping her put up shelves until they ran out of wall space. Yomo put Uta’s blessing to their luck on one of the shelves. For a while, it was the only thing besides her books and the flowers they picked that the shop had to its name. It became an easy conversation stater, with humans who were fascinated by the ugly little mask, and by ghouls who were awed that this place was blessed by a mask maker.

 

They celebrated, in their own quiet way. No ghouls were comfortable gathering in shops again just yet, so it was a family affair. They had one another, still. _Touka wasn’t alone in this._

 

It got easier over the months.

 

Money came in steadily, small, but more than either Touka or Yomo – who had his share of looting the corpses of drug dealers and yakuza – had ever seen.

 

After a year, they sold the shop. Touka only needed a smaller loan, this time. The second opening of :Re was in a larger building, with wider windows, but a dark enough interior to feel welcoming.

 

Yomo waited until they were done cleaning and setting up the furniture and shelving to appear, solemnly placing Uta’s first blessing above the door, then moving aside to allow Uta to present her with a second token. It looked like a rabbit.

 

This time, Touka was the one to place it on the shelf, with the strength of her own two hands.

 

Uta tried to order a coffee, but they didn’t have the machines set up yet. Nishiki passed him a half emptied can.

 

The second Welcome ceremony was more grand than the first. The ghouls who packed the building were all local, and about as recovered from the loss of Antique as Touka was. And they were glad to welcome this new cafe, this new, grander shelter. Touka was a 20th Ward ghoul born and raised, so there was something in the familiar blood rites that eased her nerves about the new shop and made her feel more welcome. More settled.

 

It made the darkness of the still unfamiliar corners into a welcome sight. Filled the cafe with the scent of life, a promise to guard and protect Touka’s cafe. Touka’s home.

 

_Home._

 

Uta's blessings seemed to glow subtly when refreshed, deepening the shadows as the night wore on, as Touka and her small family and her patrons Welcomed a new safe house to the Ward.

 

It reminded her, with a distance that had crumbled the pain into nostalgia, of the shrine to the King that their father had kept in the back of their closet, where it was darkest. Her father had ventured into the 24th Ward when her parents were young, and had presented it to her mother as a courting gift. Hikari hadn’t been as religious as Arata, but she still must have appreciated the gesture because she’d always joined them to bloodlet on the new moon.

 

When things had gone wrong for their little family, her father had begun bringing the King drops of the blood from the doves he’d killed. One night, Touka had caught him, and he’d told her that it was a special rite, in honor of their mother. She’d believed him. She hadn’t known what it really was. She’d only been a kid. Hell, maybe it was even true. Not even Yomo knew what Ward he’d been from.

 

But then, he’d abandoned the King.

 

Even after everything that had happened to her and Ayato, she couldn’t bring herself to do the same. They’d lost their shrine to the Doves, so they’d followed the scent of the King and wound up in hell itself. The 24th Ward was decimated on a weekly basis, and full of starvation. Once Ayato had gotten hold of a piece, they had booked it. Never looked back. But it had changed something in them, changed them. Broke something irreparable in Ayato; turned Touka's grief to rage.

 

Touka had been the only one at Antique aside from Irimi who worshiped the King, after Ayato left. Nishiki was as skeptical as life itself, and Yoshimura was more spiritual than religious, as a person. It had just been her and Irimi, in the room with the windows blocked from all light, setting single drops of blood on the King, watching the light slowly build. Kouma would meet them outside the door, after, with mugs of hot coffee.

 

Touka had spilled more blood than she should have, as things got worse and she had nothing left to run to. Combined with always eating human food, she had been left weak. _Idiot._ Things would have gone differently, had she been clear headed. She should have listened to Irimi, to Yoshimura. To Kaneki. To the King.

 

She’d sobbed and pleaded with the King after Antique fell. Begged for strength. Went back to proper worship, a drop in the darkness. Stopped eating human food. Stopped trying to be so human when she wasn’t.

 

It had paid off. When she was back on the proper path, the King’s shadow guided her steps. And now, she was here.

 

This was where she was meant to be – in a well founded home, folded into the shadows of a human neighborhood, surrounded by ghouls who would she would surround in return. Peace had been restored to the 20th Ward. Everything still ached, but everything was being set right.

 

Everything would be okay, some day.

 

* * *

 

 

The walls were less bare than :Re the first had been, and now Touka could fill them out even further.

 

She was a little hesitant, at first, about bringing out her taxidermy. It was a weird hobby, even for a human. But it was something she got into during her coursework when Yomo accidentally included a taxidermist’s community meeting flyer in with the usual detritus he continued bringing her. It had been expired, but when she ended up passing the same building on one of her runs, she found the new meeting date. It had been an impulse, but the mostly older humans there had become regular sources of income in the shop and would be good community vouchers if she ever fucked up.

 

Her collection had grown substantially over the years, and she was honestly pretty proud of her later work. And it added to the aura of the shop – humans punks became a pretty steady customer, and other ghouls found the small statues to death quaint. Animals were fairly important to surface Ward ghouls: after all, they were both the hunters and prey to humans just the same. Masks were modeled after them for a reason.

 

Although Touka still had personal problems with birds and avoided them almost entirely, she knew Yomo was fond of them – although, that could also just have been Loser – and gifted him a vulture, which he had placed above the bar. Touka hadn’t enjoyed working on it as much, but it had been worth the discomfort to see that kind of light in Yomo’s usually dull eyes. She’d overheard him explaining about it to Uta in painstaking detail when he was drunk, trying very hard to get the process exactly right. He’d almost done it, too.

 

Yomo occasionally brought in a strange piece of something or other he scavenged from somewhere as a gift. Touka had found weird things on the shelves that smelled like Nishiki but came with no explanation. He must have had cash stashed somewhere because only thrift malls could produce the oddities he found, and not even he was stupid enough to get in it with humans over stealing. But it was mostly her taxidermy and Yomo's odds and ends that filled the shop.

 

Another odd piece that turned up in the Yomo Files were business cards. Touka knew he knew what those were. He watched too much TV in the back to be ignorant about the biggest crime drama reveal trope. But that must have given him ideas about the general usefulness of business cards, because he often picked them up wherever he got his papers.

 

Thing was, he might have been right.

 

There was one card that kept appearing. A solid gray cardstock, a black logo like the wheel of a ship, no words, no titles, no names, but addresses. Addresses in fancy fonts, in changing sizes and styles and colors. Every week they were different. Touka had about seven of them in a drawer, some repeats of the same addresses, but most of them unique.

 

The taxidermy thing had turned out well, but this was a whole different ward. Touka wondered, but made no moves.

 

Until the day she caught Yomo in the room when she had picked another one out of the usual bag.

 

“That’s down the street.” He said. A warning to be careful, maybe. A tired complaint about territory invasion, maybe. An admission that he had somehow _learned to read, had read the address, and then found the place, what the fuck Yomo -_

 

“It’s the same,” He said with a shrug, looking awkward about being called out.

 

 _The same._ Touka turned the card over in her hands, watching the wheel turn. The address was just like the others; font and size and shape all weird, like it was taken from a photo of the address on the building.

 

 _It was the same as the address on the building,_ she realized dumbly, _this is for people who can’t read._

 

_This was meant to be found by ghouls._

 

* * *

 


	2. Mutsuki Tooru is Not Afraid

It is a month after Rushima, a month after Haise disappeared, that Tooru makes his move. Too much is changing around him, in him, and something needs to be done. Something needs to be done before something else happens.

  
   
A burning sun rides the evening horizon when Tooru and Shinsanpei approach the cafe.

  
   
Tooru is annoyed at having to do this so late, but it is the only way he can go unhindered without the new additions to the Quinx Squad attempting to tag along. Jing Li had watched them leave with a sharp expression, a heavy contrast to Saiko’s silence beside her on the couch.

  
  
A memory of the pity and pain in Haise's expression when they'd met Saiko for the first time had flashed through his mind when they’d introduced themselves, standing in a neat row like cemetery plots in front of Urie.

  
   
The CCG is desperate. Everything that they had fought for was thrown into disarray, like a storm at sea, and those left behind were struggling to bail out their sinking ships before they all died. _Here’s another squad of experimental children. Don’t bother to ask questions; we don’t know either. Please. Someone has to fill in the gaps._  


  
_There has to be more canon fodder to make those gaps._

  
   
A flash of pity, hidden quietly away before anyone else could see. The near expressionless verdict passed down from Aura Kiyoko, missing an arm up to the shoulder. Child soldiers in a row. The reek of bloodless desperation in the sleepless, white halls. Urie’s increasing despondence. Saiko’s silence. The hole that Shirazu left. The hole that Haise made. The sweet taste of blood.

  
   
_What would Haise think of all this?_

  
   
Tooru tries not to think about hesitance, about pity, anymore. Those things had never done him any good.

  
   
To that end, they had entered the cafe without bothering to scope it out. Tooru has been here many, many times before. There is no trace of Haise's scent here anymore, only the reek of many different ghouls. This place is run by them.

  
   
By _this_ ghoul, specifically.

  
   
Their target - Tooru's target - is turned away, washing glasses in the sink behind the counter, the bow of her apron primly tied in a perfect knot. Totally unaware. Or pretending to be.

 

A quiet piano soundtrack drifts through the tables, almost drowned out by the running water and the ambient noises of old wood and coffee talk. Only a few customers remain in the shop this close to the end of the business day.

  
   
No one calls out a greeting. The waitress does not turn to look at them. She does not flinch. A drinking glass, steaming faintly, is set beside the clean dishes by the sink.

  
   
They approached the ghoul, Tooru leading, Shinsanpei clutching his quinque case hard enough to squeak every time he shifts his hand.

  
   
"Kirishima Touka, you are suspected of being a ghoul." Tooru bothers to pronounce. This is a ghoul, not a suspect. He knows. He knows. He can smell it on her. Ghoul scent is pungent, strange. _Unappetizing_. Tooru’s mouth goes dry.

  
   
She cleans another glass calmly, then sets it aside just as gently, like she is thinking every motion through and ensuring no tension bleeds into her work. Her broad shoulders flex easy under her shirt as she continues washing. Tooru cann't tell from the angle, but he has a feeling that she has her eyes closed against him, the glasses, the piano, the too loud running water, herself.

  
   
"Which do you care about more, Sasaki Haise or the CCG?" She asks, her low voice sudden against the water. A few fat drops edge down the cleaned glasses, slip over the rims, disappear into the towel. The eyes of a mounted doe catch the orange glow of the sunset and reflect it into Tooru’s eyes from above her head. Shinsanpei flinchs at his side, rocking back slightly on his heels. A bare half inch given to fear. Tooru does not flinch, has not flinched for weeks.

  
  
_Between the CCG and Haise...?_

  
  
_Is that even a question?_

  
   
Shinsanpei shifts nervously beside him, vibrating with tension, still clutching his quinque case, still half an inch back. Tooru thinks about dismissing him. Thinks about ordering him forward. Thinks about the hole under Cochlea.

  
   
He pulls out a stool and takes a seat at the bar. Shinsanpei starts, tries to stutter out something. Moves three inches into Tooru’s space.

  
   
Tooru raises one hand calmly and waves him off. "You aren't cleared for high level interrogation yet. Wait for me in the meeting room, okay?"

  
   
Shinsanpei is a good partner to have for unlawful activity; he's the type who considers himself doomed to drowning as soon as his feet are in the water. He will never say a word about anything Tooru does, because then he would gush out everything that he has done, and he wants that least of all. He is terrified of being caught, even when they are only following orders to the letter. _He has no choice_. He nods sharply, his mouth pinched tightly, and sends a harsh look in the waitress' direction, as though she can see it from the back of her head, past the heavy, shielding fringe of his hair. The doe winks; the shadows cover its eyes and the sun slides into the red eyes of two stuffed rabbits lower on the shelves.

  
   
Perhaps she can see them. This cafe feels full of eyes, every time Tooru has come here. The patrons, the hard, dull glance of the older ghoul who works here, the steady gaze of the waitress. The taxidermy. Tooru is surrounded by eyes. Has always been. Or maybe ghouls do have eyes in the back of their heads, like Haise had once claimed. He'd somehow caught Shirazu attempting to take a whole four foot Christmas tree scavenged from a dumpster upstairs in perfect silence - save for the loud rolling of Urie's eyes from the couch and Saiko’s waved directions - without so much as leaving the kitchen. _God, Tooru misses that._

  
   
The bell on the door chimes as Shinsanpei attempts to slam it, but is thwarted by the slow hinges. Tooru holds in his sigh.

  
   
Another glass very gently joins the others. The first in the row is fully steamed up inside. Tooru's fingers twitch against his coat when the water shuts off. The silence of the - the totally empty cafe sits heavily. Where had the three customers near the picture window gone? The older woman in the back? Had they all been ghouls who had slinked out when they saw his and Shinsanpei's white coats? This whole place smells heavily of ghoul, fresh and ancient. But there are hardly any traces of human blood. The waitress has to know who they are, what they are, and kept her back to them. She knows what he really cares about without ever speaking to him. She is watching from every furry corner, every shelf. This situation is strange. Tooru doesn't like it.

  
   
There isn't much to like, these days.

  
   
A fat droplet slides into another and traces a crack down the last glass. The waitress finally finishes drying her hands and turns around to meet him.

  
   
Her light blue hair curls just as delicately around her pretty face as Tooru remembers, but the plain white eyepatch under the swath of her fringe is new. It gives him a feeling like vertigo, like surprise, but somehow he can't muster the true emotion.

  
   
It's strange, somehow, incongruous with the image she casts - the bright sunset glow flashs on the paraphernalia behind the bar in a sharp line that sets her hair glowing. It doesn't mesh with the gentle wash and rinse and set of - of someone with less peripheral vision relearning old, familiar tasks. _This woman is a ghoul._ It should be natural to think of her as capable of violence. But the soft look Haise had given her was burned into Tooru's memory, and it seems wrong to think that someone as kind and gentle as Haise could have felt such disgusting things for a violent ghoul.

  
   
Tooru has analyzed that day over and over again, stuck on the strangeness of it. _The inexplicable tears that welled up whenever Haise - who had not always been Haise, would not always be Haise - had encountered something from his past, something painful; the shocked blink, then the gentle, familiar smile that she had returned to him; the white handkerchief that had passed between them, smelling like ghoul, like her; the ease of it in her expression beyond the barely concealed shock._ She had never considered violence from or against Haise, who, by all accounts, was nothing more than a CCG agent in a ghoul den at the time. The more Tooru thinks about it, the stranger and stranger it became. The only conclusion -  
   
This woman had known Haise before Tooru did. Before Arima. Before the CCG.

  
   
Tooru wants to know.

  
   
"I know where he is," the ghoul says calmly, confident stance wide and balanced as she faces him and tucks the towel away under the bar. "But as things are now, we can't go there."

  
   
Tooru starts at the information, his coat uncomfortable with the weight of his knives. He never left more than three off his person, now. "Why not? Where is he?"

  
   
"The 24th Ward. Deeper than anyone we have on the surface has ever gone. But you -" Her eye flashes, hard and blue with determination, sharp on Tooru like a spotlight, mirrored by the flash of the sun in the vulture’s eyes in the far corner. "Can help."

  
   
"How?" He manages after a few seconds, trying his best not to turn his head away from the dead eyes watching his every move. This is - this is too much. It's too calm, too easy. She isn't desperately trying to feed him information to keep him from killing her, but actually looking at him and telling him things he wants to know like it is _easy_. She wants something from him, and fully expects to get it. This ghoul ias acting like Tooru's part in her play has already been written out. It's unsettling at the same time that it is incredible. She must know something that Tooru doesn't. She wants something that Tooru has. She knows things that Tooru wants to know.

  
  
_This is a negotiation._

  
   
What could a - a former human possibly know about the 24th Ward that ghouls who had been there didn't? What could a CCG investigator – what could Tooru, who is a CCG agent - with access to the archive. _The 24th Ward._

  
   
"...you want information from the Wack-A-Mole missions."

  
   
The ghoul from Haise's past snorts, looking less ethereal as the sun slips down and the artificial lighting takes over. It brings out the bags under eyes. Tooru must not look much better. "If that's what the raids on the 24th Ward are called, then yes. We have advantages to moving around down there against you, but we haven't exactly been mapping it out."

  
   
Ghouls were too busy fleeing for their lives when they entered or exited the Ward, and the CCG's cartographer had all the bodyguards and time in the world to set it down on paper. But something in that sentiment strikes Tooru as odd. Not as strange, not as _bad_ a feeling as usual, but something in that is -

  
   
"If no one knows how to navigate the Ward, how did Sensei get there?"

  
   
The ghoul takes in a slow, deep breath, her eye closing for a long moment as she leans back against the counter, her arms crossed. The doe and the rabbits look eerily lifelike under the florescence, their eyes dull, their expressions blank in a marketable display of peace.

  
   
"Someone who knows that place well took him there. They left from beneath the CCG. If we want to get into the Ward, it would be easier to start from there. If we had someone on the inside…" Her voice goes quiet, her body language more tense.

  
   
Tooru is on the inside. Tooru has access to the archive, Tooru has access to the destroyed battleground that is all that is left of Cochlea. Tooru, like everyone else, was left in the dark about what really happened there. The break in, the One Eyed Owl's destructive rampage, the opening of nearly every cell on the lower levels, the disappearance of Sasaki Haise. Furuta Nimura, Hirako Take, missing, maybe, or dead. The death of Washuu Tsuneyoshi. The dozens upon dozens of investigators killed by the Owl. Arima Kishou. The hole in Cochlea that makes it unstable.

  
   
Tooru wants to know.

  
   
"Was it the Owl?" There is a log that Tooru had found when going over the evidence left of the Cochlea Incident with the ragtag team of the investigators left behind, many raging and mourning their dead squad mates. The camera for Takatsuki Sen's cell had been deactivated by someone with high clearance – _Washuu level_ \- but the alarm on the door still cataloged every opening and closing. The Owl had visitors. The Owl had visitors that aligned with the logged times that both Sasaki Haise and Furuta Nimura were in the prison.

  
   
Tooru _needs_ to know.

  
   
“Yes.” The ghoul answers in a clipped tone, watching him back now, meeting his gaze with something like a challenge in her stance. Like she is daring him to ask again. Ask more.

  
   
He doesn’t need to ask. Doesn’t want to.

  
   
Tooru knows what personal attention and obsession from a ghoul means. He knows. _He knows._ He knows.

  
   
"What’s stopping me from leaving on my own, knowing this?" Tooru asks sharply, disbelief in total altruism and a small amount of panic rising in him. If all it takes is a map and the starting point, then there is nothing stopping him. The ghouls are frozen because they have neither. Tooru has both. _What gives?_ What is stopping them from killing him the second they were in Cochlea and he allowed them to see the maps? _What gives?_

  
   
His sharper tone seems to relax the ghoul, more than anything. The slight tension in her shoulders bleeds out and she leans more heavily on the counter. Like they are friends having a normal conversation. A normal disagreement. _Let’s agree to disagree on that, yeah?_

  
   
"Have you ever seen the 24th Ward? Do you know how to open a kagune wall? Do you want to fight the One Eyed Owl on your own?"

  
   
Ah. Well. The walls - no, Tooru doesn't even know what that means, not really. He's heard the mutterings of agents back from the WAM missions; he's seen a couple files. But so much about that is still a mystery to him. He can look into it, now that he knows what he doesn't know. As for the Owl - Tooru has been getting much, much stronger, lately. He can probably hold his own.

  
   
Tooru puts his elbows on the counter, mimicking the faux casual air. The One Eyed Owl. Takatsuki Sen. The logs, the visits, the camera. Haise... There was a connection here that he doesn't understand the depth of. Doesn’t want to understand. But he needs to know, now. _What does this ghoul know?_

  
   
"Why would the Owl force Sensei into the 24th Ward?"

  
   
The ghoul goes tense. Looks away. Her bangs hide her face so completely that all Tooru can see is her pinched mouth, painted a light, professional pink. It reminds him of Shinsanpei's violent silences, of how he holds everything back until it bursts out of him in blood.

  
   
"That..." The ghoul begins, and Tooru knows a lie when he hears one, "we don't know. But she left something behind. Wait here."

  
   
She pushes off from the counter and manages to make fleeing the room look elegant and planned. Tooru is left blinking, confused and suspicious, a heavy, sinking feeling embedding itself deep in his ribs. His reflection in the granite slides under him when he leans more heavily on the counter. Tooru waits, examines one of the rabbits. It’s nearly white, almost blue under the lighting. He wonders what killed it.

  
   
The Owl hadn't left anything behind but corpses. Barely. Mostly blood.

  
   
Mostly blood.

  
   
And now this. If someone like Kao – like Torso could give the CCG a run for their money, what can a powerful kakuja like the One Eyed Owl do? _Head so deep underground that even ghouls couldn’t rescue the victim._ The rhythm on Tooru’s arm speeds up as he tries to keep his breathing even.

  
   
This ghoul knows too much. She must have been there. Had she been too weak to fight the Owl? Had she been alone? She obviously wasn't an escapee, since she'd been here for several years and hadn’t been captured at the time. How had she managed to _be there_ right when the owl rampaged, when the cells were opened from the inside?

 

The camera. The logged entrances. The pit beneath Cochlea that led into a lair. A field of flowers. The multiple points of entry from the outside, all with CCG issued cards. His own ID card, his hair still dark, his secrets still secret.

  
   
The ghoul returns, looking more calm. She's taken off her apron in the back. It’s mostly dark out now.

  
   
In the warped reflection of the glasses, Tooru can see that the open sign on the door has been switched. Probably the last ghoul patron who had slunk out. Maybe even Shinsanpei, in an unforeseen moment of genius.

  
   
"Here," She says curtly, laying a small black recording device on the counter in front of him. CCG property, with the barcode of the technology department still on it. One of the older models. Tooru bets it was missing from the inventory, but that no one has noticed.

  
  
"Listen to it later."

  
   
Tooru nods and sets it in his pocket, worrying a blade through the lining there as he taps against the counter, filling the droning silence. Abruptly, he misses the sound of the water.

  
   
"We can talk later -"  
 

  
" _No_ ," Tooru interrupts before she can try to dismiss him, "Tell me what the Owl wants with him."

  
   
The waitress sucks in a hiss between her teeth, looking away again. "Fine. Fuck. Fine." She snaps finally, crossing her arms tightly and looking annoyed. "But it'll take a while."

  
   
Tooru flounders at that. Somehow she just seems – to blase. Dismissive, annoyed to have to tell him more than afraid to speak the words. Tooru is afraid to hear them all the same. And what did she mean, _take a while?_

  
   
That confusion must show on Tooru's face more than he intends it too, because she sighs deeply. "Did Haise ever... tell you about - stuff? Ghoul stuff?" The statement is paired with a vague gesture. A wave off to the side. She probably isn't indicating the wire supported snake on purpose.

  
   
"What?" No, really, what?

  
   
The ghoul stares resolutely at the dove strung to the ceiling. "Fuck, why me. Fine. Come into the back."

  
   
Tooru is this close to slamming his hand on the counter - and - and something. Maybe killing her. Or leaving. Taking his stolen recording device and being gone. Tearing out all the fur and feathers and red glass beads he can get his hands on.

  
   
If it was any other situation, he would have.

  
   
As it is, he grits his teeth tightly and stands up, tapping sharply enough on his own arm to ground himself with the pain as the ghoul walks to the back again, expecting him to follow.

  
   
She glances back at him and almost glares. "You want to know? Come on."

  
   
Tooru takes in a sharp breath. For Sasaki Haise. For what might be left of Sasaki Haise.

  
   
He follows. A pinned butterfly shakes in its case above the door when it slams closed behind him.


End file.
